My DS106 Experience

So, if it one thing that all this audio exploration and experimentation has demonstrated this week, it is the ability of audio to contribute to stories, or even to tell stories all on its own. The stories we told with just audio helped my appreciate this, but I spent some time this week thinking about audio in contexts outside of this class as well. Anyone looking for the power of audio in horror ought to watch some tornado survivor videos where the video, because of conditions, is totally blacked out. Just hearing the howl of the tornado and the shrieking of the wind as structures are torn apart around people is terrifying, no imagery necessary. The people screaming and freaking out only contributes to those terrible sounds.
The moon landing story incorporated some of those awesome powers of audio story telling as well. The sounds as they explored the distant, desolate, rocky moon were horrifying, but the creators of that story added some creepy sounds effects and such as well that helped along the way. During the speech at the end, there is an eerie hum behind the speech that contributed to both the feeling of desperation that astronauts would have felt had they been trapped on the moon as well as the sadness conveyed by the text of the speech commemorating them.
It is no wonder then, that H.G. Wells was able to frighten so many people with his radio broadcast of war of the world. It a world that seems to be dominated by visual everything, stories, videos, advertisements, and so on, it is interesting to consider the power that audio and sounds still hold.